Thursday, November 27, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Using Same Tactics in Ukraine It Employed in Chechnya, Vachagayev Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, November 27 – Mairbek Vachagayev,
who served as Ichkeria President Aslan Maskhadov’s representative in Moscow and
now lives in Paris, says that the Russian government is employing the same
means in Ukraine that it used in Chechnya 20 years ago, a conclusion with truly
disturbing implications for the future.

His remarks came following the
showing of the documentary film, “Aldy: No Statute of Limitations,” which was
made with the participation of the murdered Chechen human rights activist
Natalya Estemirova. It details one of the many tragedies which took place
during the Chechen war.

Russian forces decided to “cleanse”
the village even though the war was over. Not one militant was found among the
more than 50 people who were killed. Instead, all were peaceful residents,
including old men, women and children, Vachagayev said. “There is no
justification for such crimes, and there is no statute of limitation on them.”

What made the Russian actions in
Aldy especially horrific, he continued, is that they had no military purpose.
Russian forces had already seized Grozny, and there was no need to carry out
such an attack. What happened, the Chechen activist said, was “for show,” an
act of intimidation designed to terrify others.

The Aldy pogrom was also an act of
revenge on the part of Russian forces who had been unable to defeat “a few
thousand” Chechen fighters for so long. And what Moscow did there shows that
Russia was animated not by rational calculations like the need for oil –
Chechnya provided only one percent of Russia’s output – but by an irrational
need for “greatness.”

“After the disintegration of the
USSR,” Vachagayev said, “Russia was transformed from a super power into an
ordinary country. But Russians wanted the greatness of being a successor of the
former empire. Had they allowed [the Chechens] to leave, they would not have
lost anything.” But “they were afraid of a precedent.”

By crushing Chechnya, Vachagayev
said, Moscow showed that it would not allow anyone else to leave, and now it is
extending that by trying to take back what it in fact did lose. And it is using
the same tactics both in the recruitment of outsiders to do the job and then
presenting them as indigenous people and in the application of force.